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Dismantling Yugoslavia; Colonizing Bosnia
by Mine Aysen Doyran
18 January 2001 19:44 UTC
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Dismantling Yugoslavia; Colonizing Bosnia

 By Michel Chossudovsky (2-15-00)

      www.tenc.net [The Emperor's New Clothes]

 Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics, University of
 Ottawa.

 While Western soldiers make headlines as peace enforcers, an army
 of international bankers, lawyers, and creditors continues its
 economic conquest of the Balkans.

 As heavily-armed US and NATO troops enforce the peace in Bosnia,
 the press and politicians alike portray Western intervention in the
 former Yugoslavia as a noble, if agonizingly belated, response to an
 outbreak of ethnic massacres and human rights violations.

 In the wake of the November 1995 Dayton peace accords, the West
 is eager to touch up its self-portrait as savior of the Southern Slavs
 and get on with "the work of rebuilding" the newly sovereign states.

 But following a pattern set early on, Western public opinion has been
 misled. The conventional wisdom holds that the plight of the Balkans
 is the outcome of an "aggressive nationalism," the inevitable result
 of deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions rooted in history (1).
 Likewise, commentators cite "Balkans power-plays" and the clash
 of political personalities to explain the conflicts.(2)

 Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analyses are the
 economic and social causes of the conflict. The deep- seated
 economic crisis which preceded the civil war is long forgotten. The
 strategic interests of Germany and the US in laying the groundwork
 for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned, as does the role
 of external creditors and international financial institutions. In the
 eyes of the global media, Western powers bear no responsibility for
 the impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people.

 But through their domination of the global financial system, the
 Western powers, in pursuit of national and collective strategic
 interests, helped bring the Yugoslav economy to its knees and stirred
 its simmering ethnic and social conflicts. Now it is the turn of
 Yugoslavia's war-ravaged successor states to feel the tender mercies
 of the international financial community.

 As the world focuses on troop movements and cease-fires, the
 international financial institutions are busily collecting former
 Yugoslavia's external debt from its remnant states, while
 transforming the Balkans into a safehaven for free enterprise. With
 a Bosnian peace settlement holding under NATO guns, the West has
 unveiled a "reconstruction" program that strips that brutalized
 country of sovereignty to a degree not seen in Europe since the end
 of World War II. It consists largely of making Bosnia a divided
 territory under NATO military occupation and Western
 administration.

 Neocolonial Bosnia

 Resting on the Dayton accords, which created a Bosnian
 "constitution," the US and the European Union have installed a
 full-fledged colonial administration in Bosnia. At its head is their
 appointed High Representative, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime
 minister and European Union representative in Bosnian peace
 negotiations (3). Bildt has full executive powers in all civilian
 matters, with the right to overrule the governments of both the
 Bosnian Federation and the Republika Srpska (Serbian Bosnia). It
 make the point crystal clear, the accords spell out that "The High
 Representative is the final authority in theater regarding
 interpretation of the agreements."(4) He will work with the
 multinational military implementation force (IFOR) Military High
 Command as well as creditors and donors.

 The UN Security Council has also appointed a "commissioner"
 under the High Representative to run an international civilian police
 force. Irish police official Peter Fitzgerald, with UN policing
 experience in Namibia, El Salvador, and Cambodia (5), presides over
 some 1,700 police from 15 countries. The police will be dispatched to
 Bosnia after a five-day training program in Zagreb (6).

 The new constitution hands the reins of economic policy over to the
 Bretton Woods institutions and the London based European Bank
 for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The IMF is
 empowered to appoint the first governor of the Bosnian Central
 Bank, who, like the High Representative, "shall not be a citizen of
 Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighboring State."(7)

 Under the IMF regency, the Central Bank will not be allowed to
 function as a Central Bank: "For the first six years ... it may not
 extend credit by creating money, operating in this respect as a
 currency board." Neither will Bosnia be allowed to have its own
 currency (issuing paper money only when there is full foreign
 exchange backing), nor permitted to mobilize its internal resources
 (8). Its ability to self-finance its reconstruction through an
 independent monetary policy is blunted from the outset.

 While the Central Bank is in IMF custody, the EBRD heads the
 Commission on Public Corporations, which supervises operations of
 all public sector enterprises, including energy, water, postal
services,
 telecommunications, and transportation. The EBRD president
 appoints the commission chair and will direct public sector
 restructuring, i.e., the sell-off of state- and socially-owned assets
and
 the procurement of long-term investment funds (9). Western
 creditors explicitly created the EBRD "to give a distinctively
 political dimension to lending (10).

 As the West trumpets its support for democracy, actual political
 power rests in the hands of a parallel Bosnian "state" whose
 executive positions are held by non-citizens. Western creditors have
 embedded their interests in a constitution hastily written on their
 behalf. They have done so without a constitutional assembly and
 without consultations with Bosnian citizens' organizations. Their
 plans to rebuild Bosnia appear more suited to sating creditors than
 satisfying even the elementary needs of Bosnians.

 And why not? The neocolonization of Bosnia is the logical
 culmination of long Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia's experiment
 in market socialism and workers' self-management and to impose the
 dictate of a the free market.

 The Shape of Things to Come

 Multiethnic, socialist Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial
 power and economic success. In the two decades before 1980, annual
 gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical
 care was free, the literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was
 72 years (11). But after a decade of Western economic ministrations
 and five years of disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the
 economies of the former Yugoslavia are prostrate, their industrial
 sectors dismantled.

 Yugoslavia's implosion was partially due to US machinations.
 Despite Belgrade's non-alignment and its extensive trading relations
 with the European Community and the US, the Reagan
 administration targeted the Yugoslav economy in a "Secret
 Sensitive" 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133),
 "Us Policy towards Yugoslavia." A censored version declassified in
 1990 elaborated on NSDD 64 on Eastern Europe, issued in 1982.
 The latter advocated "expanded efforts to promote a 'quiet
 revolution' to overthrow Communist governments and parties," while
 reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented
 economy (12).

 The US had earlier joined Belgrade's other international creditors in
 imposing a first round of macroeconomics reform in 1980, shortly
 before the death of Marshall Tito. That initial round of restructuring
 set the pattern. Throughout the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank
 periodically prescribed further doses of their bitter economic
 medicine as the Yugoslav economy slowly lapsed into a coma.

 From the beginning, successive IMF sponsored programs hastened
 the disintegration of the Yugoslav industrial sector industrial
 production declined to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990
 (13) and the piecemeal dismantling of its welfare state, with all the
 predictable social consequences. Debt restructuring agreements,
 meanwhile, increased foreign debt, and a mandated currency
 devaluation also hit hard at Yugoslavs' standard of living.

 Mr. Markovic goes to Washington

 In autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav
 federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with President
 George Bush to cap negotiations for a new financial aid package. In
 return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more sweeping
 economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another wage
 freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of
 socially owned, worker- managed companies (14). The Belgrade
 nomenclature, with the assistance of Western advisers, had laid the
 groundwork for Markovic's mission by implementing beforehand
 many of the required reforms, including a major liberalization of
 foreign investment legislation.

 "Shock therapy" began in January 1990. Although inflation had
 eaten away at earnings, the IMF ordered that wages be frozen at
 their mid November 1989 levels. Prices continued to rise unabated,
 and real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months of
 1990 (15).

 The IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank. Its
 tight money , policy further crippled the country's ability to finance
 its economic and social programs. State revenues that should have
 gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went
 instead to service Belgrade's debt with the Paris and London clubs.
 The republics were largely left to their own devices.

 In one fell swoop, the reformers engineered the final collapse of
 Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal
 political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between
 Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist
 tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions,
 virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics.

 The IMF-induced budgetary crisis created an economic fait accompli
 that paved the way for Croatia's and Slovenia's formal secession in
 June 1991.

 Crashed by the Invisible Hand

 The reforms demanded by Belgrade's creditors also struck at the
 heart of Yugoslavia's system of socially-owned and worker-managed
 enterprises. As one observer noted,

 The objective was to subject the Yugoslav economy to massive
 privatization and the dismantling of the public sector. The Communist
 Party bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence sector,
 was canvassed specifically and offered political and economic
 backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social protections

 for Yugoslavia's workforce was imposed." (16)

 It was an offer that a desperate Yugoslavia could not refuse. Advised
 by Western lawyers and consultants, Markovic's government passed
 financial legislation that forced "insolvent" businesses into
 bankruptcy or liquidation. Under the new law, if a business was
 unable to pay its bills for 30 days running, or for 30 days within a
 45-day period, the government would launch bankruptcy proceedings
 within the next 15 days.

 The assault on the socialist economy also included a new banking law
 designed to trigger the liquidation of the socially-owned 3Associated
 Banks." Within two years, more than half the country's banks had
 vanished, to be replaced by newly-formed "independent
 profit-oriented institutions."

 These changes in the legal framework, combined with the IMF's
 tight money policy toward industry and the opening of the economy
 to foreign competition, accelerated industrial decline.

 From 1989 through September 1990, more than a thousand
 companies went into bankruptcy. By 1990, the annual GDP growth
 rate had collapsed to a negative 7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined
 by a further 15 percent, while industrial output shrank by 21 percent
 (l7)

 The IMF package unquestionably precipitated the collapse of much
 of Yugoslavia's well-developed heavy industry. Other socially-owned
 enterprises survived only by not paying workers. More than half a
 million workers still on company payrolls did not get regular
 paychecks in late 1990. They were the lucky ones. Some 600,000
 Yugoslavs had already lost their jobs by September 1990, and that
 was only the beginning. According to the World Bank, another 2,435
 industrial enterprises, including some of the country's largest, were
 slated for liquidation. Their 1.3 million workers half the remaining
 industrial workforce were "redundant."(18)

 As 1991 dawned, real wages were in free fall, social programs had
 collapsed, and unemployment ran rampant. The dismantling of the
 industrial economy was breathtaking in its magnitude and brutality.
 Its social and political impact, while not as easily quantified, was
 tremendous. "The pips are squeaking," as London's Financial Times
 put it.(19)

 Less archly, Yugoslav President Borisav Jovic warned that the
 reforms were "having a markedly unfavorable impact on the overall
 situation in society.... Citizens have lost faith in the state and its
 institutions.... The further deepening of the economic crisis and the
 growth of social tensions has had a vital impact on the deterioration
 of the political-security situation."(20)

 The Political Economy of Disintegration

 Some Yugoslavs joined together in a doomed battle to prevent the
 destruction of their economy and polity. As one observer found,
 "worker resistance crossed ethnic lines, as Serbs, Croats, Bosnians
 and Slovenians mobilized ... shoulder to shoulder with their fellow
 workers."(21) But the economic struggle also heightened already
 tense relations among the republics and between the republics and
 Belgrade.

 Serbia rejected the austerity plan outright, and some 650,000
 Serbian workers struck against the federal government to force
 wage hikes.(22) The other republics followed different and
 sometimes self-contradictory paths.

 In relatively wealthy Slovenia, for instance, secessionist leaders such

 as Social Democratie party chair Joze Pucnik supported the reforms:
 "From an economic standpoint, I can only agree with socially harmful
 measures in our society, such as rising unemployment or cutting
 workers' rights, because they are necessary to advance the
 economic reform process."(23)

 But at the same time, Slovenia joined other republics in challenging
 the federal government's efforts to restrict their economic autonomy.
 Both Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and Serbia's Slobodan
 Milosevic joined Slovene leaders in railing against Yugoslavia's
 attempts to impose harsh reforms.(24)

 In the multiparty elections in 1990, economic policy was at the center
 of the political debate as separatist coalitions ousted the Communists
 in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia. Just as economic collapse spurred
 the drift toward separation, separation in turn exacerbated the
 economic crisis. Cooperation among the republics virtually ceased.
 And with the republics at one another's throats, both the economy
 and the nation itself embarked on a vicious downward spiral.

 The process sped along as the republican leadership, deliberately
 fostered social and economic divisions to strengthen their own hands:
 "The republican oligarchies, who all had visions of a 'national
 renaissance' of their own, instead of choosing between a genuine
 Yugoslav market and hyperinflation, opted for war which would
 disguise the real causes of the economic catastrophe ."(25)

 The simultaneous appearance of militias loyal to secessionist leaders
 only hastened the descent into chaos. These militias, with their
 escalating atrocities, not only split the population along ethnic
lines,
 they also fragmented the workers' movement.(26)

 Western Help

 The austerity measures had laid the basis for the recolonization of
 the Balkans. Whether that required the breakup of Yugoslavia was
 subject to debate among the Western powers, with Germany leading
 the push for secession and the US, fearful of opening a nationalist
 Pandora's box, originally arguing for Yugoslavia's preservation.

 Following Franjo Tudjman's and the rightist Democratic Union's
 decisive victory in Croatia in May 1990, German Foreign Minister
 Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in almost daily contact with his counterpart
 in Zagreb, gave his go-ahead for Croatian secession.(27) Germany
 did not passively support secession; it "forced the pace of
 international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to
 recognize Slovenia and Croatia. Germany sought a free hand among
 its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mittel
 Europa."(28)

 Washington, on the other hand, favored 3a loose unity while
 encouraging democratic development ... [Secretary of State] Baker
 told Tudjman and [Slovenia's President] Milan Kucan that the United
 States would not encourage or support unilateral secession ... but if
 they had to leave, he urged them to leave by a negotiated
 agreement. (29)

 Instead, Slovenia, Croatia, and finally, Bosnia fought bloody civil
 wars against "rump" Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) or
 Serbian nationalists or both. But now, the US has belatedly taken an
 active diplomatic role in Bosnia, strengthened its relations with
 Croatia and Macedonia, and positioned itself to play a leading role in
 the region's economic and political future.

 The Post-War Regime

 Western creditors have now turned their attention to Yugoslavia's
 successor states. As with the demise of Yugoslavia, the economic
 aspects of post-war reconstruction remain largely unheralded, but
 the prospects for rebuilding the newly independent republics appear
 bleak. Yugoslavia's foreign debt has been carefully divided and
 allocated to the successor republics,(30) which are now strangled in
 separate debt rescheduling and structural adjustment agreements.

 The consensus among donors and international agencies is that past
 macroeconomics reforms adopted under IMF advice had not quite
 met their goal and further shock therapy is required to restore
 "economic health" to Yugoslavia's successor states. Croatia and
 Macedonia have followed the IMF's direction: Both have agreed to
 loan packages to pay off their shares of the Yugoslav debt that
 require a consolidation of the process begun wit Ante Markovic's
 bankruptcy program. The all too familiar pattern of plant closings,
 induced bank failures, and impoverishment continues apace.

 And global capital applauds. Despite an emerging crisis in social
 welfare and the decimation of his economy, Macedonian Finance
 Minister Ljube Trpevski proudly informed the press that "the World
 Bank and the IMF place Macedonia among the most successful
 countries in regard to current transition reforms. (31)

 The head of the IMF mission to Macedonia, Paul Thomsen, agreed.
 He avowed that "the results of the stabilization program were
 impressive" and gave particular credit to "the efficient wages
 policy" adopted by the Skopje government. Still, his negotiators
 added, even more budget cutting will be necessary. (32)

 But Western intervention is making its most serious inroads on
 national sovereignty in Bosnia. The neocolonial administration
 imposed by the Dayton accords and supported by NATO9s firepower
 ensures that Bosnia's future will be determined in Washington, Bonn,
 and Brussels not Sarajevo.

 Reconstruction Colonial Style

 If Bosnia is ever to emerge from the ravages of war and
 neocolonialism, massive reconstruction will be essential. But judging
 by recent Balkan history, Western assistance is more likely to drag
 Bosnia into the Third World than to lift it to parity with its European

 neighbors.

 The Bosnian government estimates that reconstruction costs will
 reach $47 billion. Western donors have pledged $3 billion in
 reconstruction loans, yet only $518 million dollars have so far been
 given. Part of this money is tagged to finance some of the local
 civilian costs of IFOR's military deployment and part to repay
 international creditors. (33)

 Fresh loans will pay back old debt. The Central Bank of the
 Netherlands has generously provided "bridge financing' of $37
 million to allow Bosnia to pay its arrears with the IMF, without which
 the IMF will not lend it fresh money. But in a cruel and absurd
 paradox, the sought-after loans from the IMF's newly created
 "Emergency Window" for "post-conflict countries" will not be used
 for post-war reconstruction. Instead, they will repay the Dutch
 Central Bank, which had coughed up the money to settle IMF
 arrears in the first place. (34)

 Debt piles up, and little new money goes for rebuilding Bosnia's war
 torn economy.

 While rebuilding is sacrificed on the altar of debt repayment,
 Western governments and corporations show greater interest in
 gaining access to strategic natural resources. With the discovery of
 energy reserves in the region, the partition of Bosnia between the
 Federation of Bosnia- Herzegovina and the Bosnian-Serb Republika
 Srpska under the Dayton accords has taken on new strategic
 importance. Documents in the hands of Croatia and the Bosnian
 Serbs indicate that coal and oil deposits have been identified on the
 eastern slope of the Dinarides Thrust, retaken from rebel Krajina
 Serbs by the US-backed Croatian army in the final offensives before
 the Dayton accords. Bosnian officials report that Chicago-based
 Amoco was among several foreign firms that subsequently initiated
 exploratory surveys in Bosnia.(35)

 "Substantial" petroleum fields also lie in the Serb-held part of
 Croatia just across the Sava River from Tuzla, the headquarters for
 the US military zone.(36) Exploration operations went on during the
 war, but the World Bank and the multinationals that conducted the
 operations kept local governments in the dark, presumably to
 prevent them from acting to grab potentially valuable areas. (37)

 With their attention devoted to debt repayment and potential energy
 bonanzas, the Western powers have shown little interest in rectifying
 the crimes committed under the rubric of ethnic cleansing. The
 70,000 NATo troops on hand to "enforce the peace" will accordingly
 devote their efforts to administering the partition of Bosnia in
 accordance with Western economic interests rather than restoring
 the status quo ante.

 While local leaders and Western interests share the spoils of the
 former Yugoslav economy, they have entrenched socio ethnic
 divisions in the very structure of partition. This permanent
 fragmentation of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines thwarts a united
 resistance of Yugoslavs of all ethnic origins against the
 recolonization of their homeland.

 But what's new? As one observer caustically noted, all of the leaders
 of Yugoslavia's successor states have worked closely with the West:
 "All the current leaders of the former Yugoslav republics were
 Communist Party functionaries and each in turn vied to meet the
 demands of the World Bank and the IMF, the better to qualify for
 investment loans and substantial perks for the leadership." (38)

 The Only Possible World?

 Western-backed neoliberal macroeconomic restructuring helped
 destroy Yugoslavia. Yet, since the onset of war in 1991, the global
 media have carefully overlooked or denied their central role.
 Instead, they have joined the chorus singing praises of the free
 market as the basis for rebuilding a war shattered economy. The
 social and political impact of economic restructuring in Yugoslavia
 has been carefully erased from our collective understanding.
 Opinion-makers instead dogmatically present cultural, ethnic, and
 religious divisions as the sole cause of the crisis. In reality, they
are
 the consequence of a much deeper process of economic and political
 fracturing.

 Such false consciousness not only masks the truth, it also prevents
 us from acknowledging precise historical occurrences. Ultimately, it
 distorts the true sources of social conflict. When applied to the
 former Yugoslavia, it obscures the historical foundations of South
 Slavic unity, solidarity and identity. But this false consciousness
lives
 across the globe, where shuttered factories, jobless workers, and
 gutted social programs are the only possible world, and "bitter
 economic medicine" is the only prescription.

 At stake in the Balkans are the lives of millions of people.
 Macroeconomic reform there has destroyed livelihoods and made a
 joke of the right to work. It has put basic needs such as food and
 shelter beyond the reach of many. It has degraded culture and
 national identity. In the name of global capital, borders have been
 redrawn, legal codes rewritten, industries destroyed, financial and
 banking systems dismantled, social programs eliminated. No
 alternative to global capital, be it market socialism or "national"
 capitalism, will be allowed to exist.

 But what happened to Yugoslavia and now continues in its weak
 successor states should resonate beyond the Balkans. Yugoslavia is
 a mirror for similar economic restructuring programs in not only the
 developing world, but also in the United States, Canada and Western
 Europe. The - Yugoslav reforms are the cruel reflection of a
 destructive economic model pushed to the extreme.



 NOTES
 -- (1) See, e.g., former US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Robert
 Zimmerman, 'The Last Ambassador, A Memoir of the Collapse of
 Yugoslavia,'Foreign Affairs,v. 74,n.2,1995.
 -- (2) For a critique, see Milos Vasic, et al., War Against Bosnia,9
 Vreme News Digest Agency, Apr. 13, 1992.
 -- (3) Testimony of Richard C. Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of
 State, Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, before the Senate
 Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Foreign Operations,
 Dec 19, 1995.
 -- (4) Dayton Peace Accords, 'Agreement on High Representative,
 Articles I and II, Dec 16, 1995.
 -- (5) United Nation General Secretariat, Curriculum Vitae of
 Thomas Peter Fitzgerald, n.d. (1995).
 -- (6) Dayton Peace Accords, Agreement on Police Task Force,2
 Article II.
 -- (7) Ibid., Agreement on General Framework, Article VII
 -- (8) Ibid.
 -- (9) Ibid, Agreement Public Corporations, Article I.10 ---
 -- (10) Stabilizing Europe, The Times (London), Nov 22, 1990.
 -- (11) World Bank, World Development Report 1991, Statistical
 Annex, Tables 1 and 2, 1991.
 -- (12) Sean Gervasi, 'Germany, the US, and the Yugorlav Crisis,'
 Covert Action, n. 43, Winter 1992-93, p 42
 -- (13) World Bank, Industrial Restructuring Study: Overview,
 Issues, and Strategy for Restructuring, Washington, D C, June 1991,
 pp. 10,14.
 -- (14) Gervasi, op. cit., p. 44
 -- (15) World Bank, Restructuring, op. cit., p. viii
 -- (16) Ralph Schoenman, 'Divide and Rule Schemes in the
 Balkans,9 The Organizer (San Francisco), Sept. 11,1995
 -- (17) Judit Kiss, 3Debt Management in Eastern Europe, Eastern
 European Economics, May June 1894, p 59
 -- (18) Already laid off and 'redundant workers constituted fully two
 thirds of the industrial work force. World Bank, Restructuring, op.
 cit., Annex I
 -- (19) Jurek Martin, 'The road to be trodden to Kosovo," Financial
 Times, Mar 13, 1991.
 -- (20) British Broadcasting Service, 3Borisav Jovic Tells SFRY
 Assembly Situation Has 'Dramatically Deteriorated,'3 Apr 27, 1991.
 -- (21) Schoenman, op. cit.
 -- (22) Gervasi ep cit p 44
 -- (23) Federico Nier Fischer, 3Eastern Europe: Social Crisis,2 Inter
 Press Service, Sept 5, 1890
 -- (24) Klas Bergman, 'Markovic Seeks to Keep Yugoslavia One
 Nation, Christian Science Monitor, July 11,1990, p.6.
 -- (25) Dimitrue Boarov, 3A Brief Review of Anti-Inflation Programs:
 the Curse of the Dead Programs, Vreme News Digest Agency, Apr.
 13, 1992.
 -- (27) Gervasi, op cit,p 65
 -- (28) Ibid, p 45
 -- (29) Zimmerman,op cit
 -- (30) In June 1995, the IMF, acting on behalf of creditor banks and
 Western governments, proposed to redistribute that debt as follows:
 Serbia and Montenegro, 36%, Croatia 28%, Slovenia 16%,
 Bosnia&Herzegovina, 16% and Macedonia 5%

 This article was originally published in Covert Action Quarterly
 No. 56. Spring 1996. Copyright Michel Chossudovsky


--
Mine Aysen Doyran
Ph.D Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222



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